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SpecFlow vs Cucumber comparison of testing frameworks
What are the differences between SpecFlow and Cucumber?

SpecFlow

https://specflow.org/

Cucumber

https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-ruby
Programming language

.NET

Ruby

Category

Acceptance Testing

Acceptance Testing

General info

SpecFlow is a test automation solution for .NET

SpecFlow is a test automation solution for .NET which follows the BDD paradigm, and is part of the Cucumber family. SpecFlow tests are written with Gherkin, using the official Gherkin parser which allows you to write test cases using natural languages and supports over 70 languages.

An automation tool for Behavior-Driven Development

The specifications are written in plain texts, which allows them to be easily understandable for all stakeholders. Cucumber Framework also supports languages beyond Ruby e.g. Java, JavaScript and Scala.
xUnit
Set of frameworks originating from SUnit (Smalltalk's testing framework). They share similar structure and functionality.

No

No

Client-side
Allows testing code execution on the client, such as a web browser

Yes

Front-end behaviour is tested. With specflow specifications of the expected behaviours are made and specflow tests against this

Yes

You can test the front-end part like the GUI using cucumber and selenium, they integrate well to test your front-end.
Server-side
Allows testing the bahovior of a server-side code

Yes

Back-end behaviour is tested. Specifications of the expected behaviours are made and specflow tests against them

Yes

You can test back-end components such as APIs using rest & soap clients, and databases using whatever client libraries were provided by the libraries that existed in those stacks
Fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data (fixtures) that are test-local. This ensures specific environment for a single test

Yes

BeforeTestRun and AfterTestRun are executed once for each thread which is a limitation of the current architecture.

Group fixtures
Allows defining a fixed, specific states of data for a group of tests (group-fixtures). This ensures specific environment for a given group of tests.

N/A

Yes

Using the cucumber extension aruba you can create fixures in two steps: 1.Create a fixtures-directory; 2.Create fixture files in this directory
Generators
Supports data generators for tests. Data generators generate input data for test. The test is then run for each input data produced in this way.

Yes

SpecFlow contains a generator component. The SpecFlow IDE integration tries to locate the generator component in your project structure, in order to use the generator version matching the SpecFlow runtime in your project

Yes

You can group your fixtures inside your fixtures directories
Licence
Licence type governing the use and redistribution of the software

BSD license

MIT License

Mocks
Mocks are objects that simulate the behavior of real objects. Using mocks allows testing some part of the code in isolation (with other parts mocked when needed)

Yes

Specflow intergrates well with mock to give it excellent mocking capabilities

Yes

By using all of RSpec’s supported mocking frameworks (RSpec, Mocha, RR, Flexmock)
Grouping
Allows organizing tests in groups

Yes

You can create test suites with specflow

Yes

Cucumber allows the use of tag Cucumber feature files or individual tests to group tests. Then, you can pass a Cucumber tagged expression at test execution that specifies the tag (grouped) tests to run. https://www.toolsqa.com/cucumber/cucumber-tags/
Other
Other useful information about the testing framework